Y'all act like you've never seen a runner before

Ok sorry, I'm channeling my inner Slim Shady today, because why not? So I did a long run this weekend, finally, after procrastinating it for a few weeks.  Surprisingly, it was fairly easy.  I followed my regular route up the rail trail to the Smith household, picked up Murdock for some middle miles, and then followed the rail trail back to my car.  In all, it was 18.5 miles.  BOOM.  The first 5.5 took me 48 minutes, because I like to overachieve.  The middle 7.5 we did at a 9:48 pace.  The last 5.5 I did a 9:10ish pace.  So, you know, right on track with where I want to be.  Then of course, I got sick.  Because apparently I can't do a long run anymore without getting a raging cold later that day.  Anyone else have this problem?  I looked it up and it doesn't seem to be a common situation, but that just could be, because as Ryan says, I don't know how to Google right.  So if you're in the same boat as me and get a terrible head cold after long running, I feel your pain.  Hopefully it clears up soon, because I have the 20 miler on the 12th and I really don't want to have a cold while running.
Besides that long run, Murdock and I did the Fudgecicle 5k on Saturday as a team.  It was the final race of the Fudgecicle series so they had two person teams and the winners got a prize at the end.  Since we were one of three teams in the Coed Open Division, we managed to take first place.  We both got scratch tickets that won 0 dollars, so there's that.  It's a nice easy 5K though and real close to the house, so I didn't mind getting up and running.
I'm still fundraising over here, in case you're looking for something to donate too.  I've been giving away Disney drawings for people that donate over $25, if that's something that interests you.  I can do more than just Disney, that just happens to be my favorite, so if you want a different picture you'll have to make a special request.  So if you want to get in on this deal, you have to go over to my fundraising page and make a donation stat.  Here's the link, in case you're looking for it again.  DONATE RIGHT HERE!
And now some of the pictures I'm sending out to those who already donated.  Enjoy.

Prime City

Today I'm taking you out of my running world and back into my school world.  If you have children in your household who are currently in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade in Massachusetts, you may be interested in this.  For those of you who don't, you might not be as on top of the current educational goings-on in this state, so you might not be too interested in this first part, but I promise I'll make the end more exciting.  So you can always scroll down to the photos and reverse read your way up if you want.  I know that's an awful writing technique but I've already committed to it, so here we are.
This year in my city, we've decided to forgo the MCAS test in favor of the PARCC test.  There's a million reasons behind that decision, none of which I'm going to talk about right now.  But for those of you who are in a city/town who is opting into PARCC for the year, you may have realized that this test is HARD.  Believe me when I tell you I don't say that lightly.  The other day, I got a practice test that PARCC has released to the public, and brought it home to try out.  I figured if we were going to require these students to take this test in 90 minutes or less and solve every problem, I should find out if that was realistic.  As a highly-educated, well-informed, licensed elementary school teacher, the 17 questions on Unit 1 took me a total of 74 minutes to complete.  Think about this for just one second.  I know how to read in English, I can decipher questions and understand what problems are asking for even if there's more than one step, or the steps aren't explicit in the problem.  I also know how to do regular old multi-digit multiplication and long division.  Keep in mind that many of my students are not FLUENTLY SPEAKING English yet, do not necessarily read on a 4th grade level yet, and have never learned how to do long division.  (That's because it's a standard not taught in 4th grade, and it's not really a key point, but I figured I'd add it in.) To ask these poor children to take a test in 90 minutes, I feel, is setting unrealistic expectations on these students and asking them to fail from the beginning.  Look at it this way.  The MTEL has a 4 hour time limit for 100 multiple choice questions and two open-response questions.  Yet, I know plenty of adults who have caved under the pressure, not finished in time, or completely blown the test because they were too worried about the time limits.  If adults have a hard time with it, why are we putting a 90 minute time limit on a test for a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds?  It just doesn't seem fair to me.  I'm fine with the actual test, and I do think many of my students could do the actual math part, it's the reading and the time limit that are going to get in the way.  Imagine you moved to Russia and two years after being there, someone handed you a math test in Russian and told you that you had 90 minutes to take and pass the whole thing.  If that sounds crazy, just remember that many times, this is what we're being forced to ask our students to do.  Just so you can get a feel for it, here's a released PARCC test question from a previous test.

Use the information provided to answer Part A and Part B for question 3. The number of science fair projects entered for each grade in a city-wide science fair is shown. 
 City-Wide Science Fair 

   Grade    Number of Science Fair Projects
           3    462
           4    759
           5    891
Part A
The science fair projects are set up on tables. There are 99 long tables used. Each long table holds 7 projects. The rest of the projects are set up on short tables. Each short table can hold 4 projects. What is the fewest number of short tables that will be needed for the rest of the projects?
        A) 202
        B) 203
        C) 354
        D) 355

Part B
The science fair judges will be science teachers and volunteers. Each judge will only have time to view 5 science fair projects. There are 133 science teachers. What is the fewest number of volunteers needed to have enough judges for all of the projects?
       A) 290
       B) 396
       C) 422
       D) 423

Please take a moment and actually read that test question.  It's a hard question to break down, and while I'm sure my students COULD do it, I don't think they could do it in the time allotted, which I think is the real problem.  We keep talking about getting these kids college ready, but at this point, I don't even know if ANY of my students will be able to afford college when the time comes. So I'm glad we're working on improving our countries skills in STEM subjects, but I truly feel that this 90 minute time window is unfair and needs to be removed if we want these students to REALLY succeed.

Moving on from PARCC though, in a brighter spot, I've been reviewing some topics with a very small group of fourth graders at the end of the day.  These are the students that are currently not passing, but could be, if they had that extra help, so I'm revisiting some former standards to really help drive the concepts home.  The first standard we revisited was prime and composite numbers. I noticed that these students could list factors and multiples, but couldn't tell the difference between prime and composite numbers.  So for the past two days, we've focused solely on prime numbers.  Yesterday we built Prime City, an idea I came up with in the shower one morning.  Each student got a few pieces of long construction paper and bunch of small squares.  I wrote this note on the board and we got right to work.  If you can't read it, it says: Prime City.  Prime City is under construction. The construction workers are putting windows on the buildings today.  Each building can only have a prime number for the number of windows.  Help finish Prime City by putting windows on the buildings.  
The students got their construction paper and a glue stick and worked on putting windows on their buildings. They had to tell me what number each building represented and why it was a prime number.  If they couldn't tell me, they couldn't use that number. The group had a lot of fun doing this, and the cities came out awesome.  Today, to reinforce the concept, they played Prime Number Match.  This is something I came up with a lunch today and figured I might as well go with it.  It's similar to Memory, but they only keep the match if both numbers are prime.  In order to prove that their match was prime, they had to list all the factors of both numbers on a separate sheet of paper and label prime or composite.  By the end, only one student had managed to match two prime numbers, but they were having fun playing and were doing a great job of listing the factors.  I'm very interested to see how their homework comes back tomorrow, to see who really did learn the concept of prime numbers after all of this.
 Here are the pictures of Prime City and the rules for Prime Number Match, if you're interested in that.

Ok, now that we're done with that educational stuff, here's the running stuff for everyone who reads this for that.  Sorry I left it for the end, I just had to get that PARCC stuff out of the way.  Here we go.  Yesterday I did 3 miles of sprints and hill repeats on the treadmill and then did a 10 minute ab workout at home, followed by stretching.  Today I did another 3 regular miles on the treadmill, 2 flat and one at 2.0 incline.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but man, running on that treadmill at my typical outdoor pace is really a struggle.  I made it through the first mile at an 8:34 no problem and by 1.2 it was a real struggle to continue. It's just so easy to stop and jump off, since I'm not going anywhere.  I think the biggest difference is that when I'm outside, even if I stop, I still have to get back to where I started from, so eventually I have to keep moving.  Inside, I'm not actually going anywhere, so I end up stopping all the time, because, you know, whatever.  Bad habit? Definitely.  Fixable? Who knows, I've tried many times, it probably is, I'm just real bad at actually fixing it.  So, that's my running for the week so far.  I'm going to try and get 5 or 6 in tomorrow since it's supposed to be warm/rainy.  Friday I have the Disney in Concert show with my mom at night, so I'll probably skip the running and just do a regular workout instead.  But, I do need some help deciding which shoes to wear on Friday night, so leave your opinion below, after you check out both options.

Planking in the bedroom.  I never realize how much harder it is to plank in bare-feet until I do it in shoes.  (I always do my boxing workout barefoot, which includes the ab session at the end.) Hip raises/bridges are also much easier with shoes on, for the record.

OK: Shoe Choice Time

A: Mickey and Minnie Themed shoes

B: Little Mermaid Themed Shoes

I patiently await your answers.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading, even if you did scroll down and work your way backwards!

V-A-C-A-TION

In the winter time.  Which means it's cold. But not that cold.  Yesterday was colder.  Tomorrow will be warmer.  (You really have to sing/chant that part for it to make sense, otherwise it's just a bunch of short sentences.)  But the temperature has improved from -10 to at least 20 something, so it's really not that cold today.  Then tomorrow the temp is supposed to get up to 50 with rain, so hopefully some of the snow will melt and there will be open sidewalks again.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, if that matters to anyone reading this.  We're not really into celebrating those kinds of holidays, so we didn't do anything overly exciting.  On Saturday we went to RunBase in Boston and then at lunch/dinner at 5 Napkin Burgers.   Yesterday we went to Kohls and bought a self-timing crockpot and some pants.  We're so romantic, you can't even handle it.  

I swear when I jumped on here I had a lot more to say, but I've either forgotten it, or it wasn't important, because now I'm mostly fresh out of updates.  I am still looking for donations and working on a fundraising night.  I'm only about $1750 away from my goal, so if you want to take pity on me and provide some extra money, you can donate that right here. Boston Marathon 2016 Donation Page

Since I can't remember anything else that I wanted to write about, here are the end of post pictures. In recognition of Valentine's day, it's the before and after of Rapunzel and Flynn Rider in their boat during the floating lanterns.  If you really like the after picture, I'll send it to you in exchange for a $50 donation. How's that for incentive.
*UPDATE*
I just remembered what else I wanted to share.  Two things actually.  One is running related, one is not.  So, first, the running thing.  Today I got an email from Green Strides, a fairly well-known race host around these parts.  They've been putting on the Earth Rock and Run half-marathon for a few years now, at least.  BLet me back up. Back in 2014 I ran that race with my running partners, one of which was pregnant at the time.  There's a lot I remember about this race, but specifically, the giant hill towards the end.  I'm not kidding when I say giant, but you better believe that two of the three of us ran up that hill and took it like it was our own.  (The third was pregnant and gets a pass for not making it that far).  I'm sure there's a post back in here about that race actually.  But the point is, even without training for this half, we ran it, hill and all.  Jump forward to today again and here you'll see this lovely email that I received.

Lest you not want to open that up or can't read it clearly let me share the main idea with you.  A bunch of people complained that the race was too hilly, so Green Strides changed the entire course to eliminate most of the hills.  Say it with me now running friends.....WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!? Is it just me, or is that absurd? Never have I ever heard of a race group bowing to pressure to drop hills out of their course. As far as I'm concerned, you check the elevation map before you run if you're that concerned about hills. Then you decide not to run this race.  Or, you just suck it up and run up the hill because you're already there. Running is not about finding flat roads to run on, it's about taking the challenge and finding out what you're made of.  Before you accuse me of being too into this though, I know that not everyone runs for the same reasons I do, but I still don't think hills should be removed because people complained. We live in a hilly area and it's just part of the run.  In the words of  Miley Cyrus, there's always going to be another mountain....

Now that we're over that, let's move onto the second item that I wanted to share.  This is not related to running, but it is related to country music.  You see, I had tickets for the Lee Brice/Tyler Farr show in Lowell on March 17, mostly because I really wanted to see Tyler Farr in person.  I just like his music, I can't help it.  Sadly, he backed out of the tour after getting vocal chord surgery, which was disappointing, but I was still going to go to the show, because I guess I like Lee Brice enough too.  But then I got our elementary school basketball tournament schedule, and wouldn't you know it, my boys team is playing on Thursdsay, March 17, at 5:45 p.m.  Obviously I can't abandon these boys in the one big game that matters to go see a country concert instead, but it was a little disappointing.  Being there for my team is far more important to me than making it out to Lowell to see Lee Brice perform, but it seems like this concert was doomed anyways.  Hopefully Tyler heads out on the road again next year and I'll get the chance to see him then.  

And now back to those pictures as promised above.

Good, good, good, good eleven

Finish that lyric, because there's only 11 more days until the marathon! Woooooooooooo.  A far cry from October's marathon, I'm actually excited about this one.  I go to bed thinking about how awesome it's going to be when I break the 4 hour mark.  Maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself, but I'd rather be excited about it than indifferent, because we saw what indifference did last time.  Bottom line is 4 hours or not, I'm pumped to be running Baton Rouge again.  Sure, my race day logistics are still being worked out, but hopefully I'll have a handle on that by Friday.  Here's the main problem.  Usually I carry a 24 oz water bottle with hand strap.  As you might imagine, it gets tiresome having your hands full for an entire marathon.  So, I thought about changing over to a hydration belt.  Unfortunately I'm having the terrible problem of the belt riding up and moving around while I'm running.  To the point where I had to stop a mile in to my run today to adjust the entire thing to it's smallest point and anchor it down behind the phone pouch I was carrying in my waistband. Is this a common problem with the hydration belts? My next test is going to be to safety pin the belt to my waistband and see if that solves all problems.  Unfortunately, there's a good chance I"m going to be running in shorts and I really don't want to worry about the weight of the belt pulling my shorts down. 

 How does one go about fixing this problem? I really wanted to get rid of the hand-held water bottle, but it seems like the best way to stay hydrated and have the least amount of gear issues at the same time.  Now some people may say to just leave the water bottle behind and only use the water stops on the course, but it's not for the water, it's for the Tailwind.  Maybe I'm using it as a crutch, but much like Dumbo and his feather, I need this Tailwind to fly.  Sure, in the end, Dumbo didn't NEED the feather, but this is not the race I want to learn that in. So even though I intend to use the water stops along the way, I need something to carry my Tailwind in as well.  Ideally, I'd have someone hold onto the bottle and pick it up at the halfway mark, but I don't want other people to have to worry about being in a certain place at a certain time.  Putting my time goal stress onto another person isn't fair.  I'm going to give the safety pin trick a try and if that doesn't work, then maybe I will just go back to hand-held.  As far as Camelbak backpacks go, I already spent a fair amount on this hydration belt, so I don't want to go out and buy another item that may end up with the same problem anyways.  Hopefully the safety pins will work and if it's really necessary, I can run in capris instead of shorts, as long as the weather doesn't go above 65 that day.  

Other than the gear issues, the Gibbs training method has been completed, so now it's going to be a wait and see kind of game.  I'm really banking on running my half as fast as I have been running them lately, which will give me slightly more wiggle room for the other half.  I don't want to bust through the first half like a maniac, but I feel like if I take the first half slow, I won't speed up for the second half.  I'll still feel great running, but my four hour mark would be left behind, which is not what I want.  I know, I know, that's 100% not the proper way to run a marathon, but at this point, being number 5, I might as well stick with what I know.  Last time I didn't run through my first half real quick, I ended up at a 5 hour marathon, so who's to say what's really the right approach here anyways? On that note, I'll end with this picture of a beautiful champion who made a great point that I feel is extremely relevant to my thoughts right now. 

Wake up, wake up, wake up, it's the first of the month

And I swear in 10 seconds I'm going to go make my math posters, which is what I came up here to do.  But first, an update! Nothing to do with running, since I haven't done any of that all week. I have either a) a cold or b) allergies, but whatever it is, it's preventing me from running properly, because my lungs/nose are all clogged up.  Apparently every time I long run now, I'm going to have to take a week off due to clogged airways.  It's really going to make my training so much better.  I guess it could help with lung capacity, so that's something to think about.  Since I have no running info for you, I thought I'd share my Halloween instead.  If you're super pumped to hear about how exciting it was, I hate to let you down, because it wasn't anything fancy.  We handed out candy for two hours on our front porch listening to Halloween tunes.  It was fun, but it wasn't a wild party.  I did upgrade my skeleton costume from last year.  This year I added skeleton feet shoes and a mask.  At first I was just going to go mask-less and face paint free, but then I found a plain white masquerade mask in our Halloween bins.  Since I had it, I figured I might as well add to it and make it a full on skull mask.  All in all, I think it came out fantastic.  It was super easy to make too.  I cut out a top half of a skull, taped that to the top of the eye holes, and then cut out a lower half.  It was a little tricky to get the teeth and the mandible right, but I managed to pull it off.  I taped that part to the bottom of the eye holes, colored in some excess areas black, and added some cracks.  Boom. Instant mask.  The top and bottom probably should have been glued on, but I was in a time crunch since I decided this super last minute, at 4 p.m. yesterday.  Aside from that, today we raked up all the leaves in the yard, filled seven lawn waste bags, and died a little bit because the trees still look like they have the majority of their leaves.  Then I went to Michael's on my way to the grocery store and found out that Fall decor was 80% off.  I bought a few items because I realized that our house is lacking in the Thanksgiving aspect of decorations.  We have tons of Halloween and Christmas, but for the month of November, we're really boring.  So I bought some things to make a wreath.  That's basically it for this weeks exciting adventures.  One more thing, I can't remember if I shared this already or not, on Tuesday Title Boxing Saugus was looking for a new design for their blank chalkboard wall, so I went over and drew a boxing Mickey.  It came out real nice, considering it was the first time I ever really worked with chalk, especially on a large scale.  Alright, that really is all for now, check out the pictures to see the mask, wreath, and boxing Mickey!

Full costume - all hand-painted!

Fall wreath

Hit it Hard

Spring-ish

The past two days have been nice in the weather department.  I mean, nice enough to be outside without freezing your face off, so that's Spring in my book.  I've been taking the track team out for neighborhood runs when we're not at the actual track so I'm glad the weather is cooperating.  Today I tried to take the girls for a 2 mile run. Key word there is definitely tried.  Out of the 20 girls that are running long distance, 1 made it the entire 2 miles with me.  Yes. ONE.  She managed to come from behind in the middle of the first mile, catch up to the front, and keep up until the end.  What happened to the other 19 you ask?  Well. 3 said they got lost. (We ran in a full circle and then a straight out and back down the street by the high school, so you be judge of that excuse...) 10 stopped at the front of the school and eventually figured out that we were in the back and the other 4 straggled in sporadically with various excuses and two other girls must have missed the entire memo about the course because they ran the same 1.5 loop two times.  Good for them for that ambition, unfortunately, they weren't super fast at it.  At least they got in a good workout.  I was a little irritated at the girls who "didn't know what we were doing" because I felt like that was just an excuse because they didn't feel like working.  As far as I'm concerned, if you're not going to work hard at practice, don't bother wasting the time.  After all, we only have 30 uniforms available, so we're going to end up having to have a bunch of girls sit out anyways.  Just another joy of an urban school district. But, as irritating as it is to see them give up so easily, I will say this.  They keep coming back, they keep attempting the workouts, and they all did the core and the punishment workout without much complaining.  So at least they have that going for them!
Outside of track, day 2 of MCAS was today.  I think my fifth grade friends did fairly well.  It seemed like the entire fifth grade was working straight up to the end of the school day bell, so that's got to be a good sign, right? Before we started this morning I played the Rocky speech from the newest Rocky movie.  You know, the one where he talks about how "it's not how hard you hit, it's how hard you get hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. How much you can take and keep moving forward...You have to be willing to take the hits..."  To the average reader it might not seem like it would have made a difference, but I am convinced it home with the one student who I was really aiming it for.  I've never seen him work as hard as he did today.  So, even if it only really inspired that one student, that's enough for me.  Tomorrow the 4th grade is doing their long write.  EEP.  But then there's no school Friday, so at leas there's that to look forward too.  I might try to get in a 6 mile run on Friday morning if possible, as long as it's not raining.  Supposedly it's going to be in the mid-50s, so that would be some ideal running weather.
Still looking for summer work, so if you or anyone you know needs a tutor, remember to stop by my website Gibbs Tutoring.  Right now I'm pretty open as far as scheduling goes, so get in while you still can!

And now some theme pictures.  This month's theme: The Haunted Mansion.  Special focus on forced perspective for buildings.  When I figure that out, I'll add the actual mansion to the background of the first picture.

Beware of hitchhiking ghosts - Phineas, Ezra, and Gus.

Haunted Mansion wall-paper design. So cool.

Springing Forward

Tonight, or tomorrow morning I guess, it's time to SPRING FORWARD! Wooo woooo! I love daylight savings because I no longer have to turn the lights on when I leave the house at 3:30 to make sure I can see when I get back home from boxing at 5:30.  In short, I hate when the day is dark except for the time when I'm at work and the hour or so I have to be out doing things before I have to get ready for dinner etc.  But I love the daylight.  I don't even care that we lose an hour.  You take that hour and enjoy it mother nature, because all I want is the sunshine and some snow melt.  On top of this wonderful phenomenon, it might actually be over 40 for TWO days next week.  That's right, TWO WHOLE DAYS! Everything's coming up Milhouse.
Mostly I'm looking forward to the snow to melt so I can get back outside and actually run.  Last weekend I did the 4 miler in Lawerence as part of the Wild Rover series.  There was supposed to be a 5 miler in Lowell this weekend, but it's been postponed due to the hulking snowbanks that are still taking over the streets.  So, now, the 3 miler and the 5 miler are not being held until mid-April. Which is fine and dandy, but it's severely impacting my actual running regime.  I've been using the tread at boxing, but only getting in 2 miles.  And, full disclosure, sometimes it's not even speed work.  I know it's my own fault for not getting myself moving faster, but it's just so hard to run on the treadmill when all I want is to run outside again.  I'm thinking that maybe I ought to check out the lake or the beach.  Those areas might be clean enough to run for a few miles/laps and at least it's something other than staring at a wall.
There hasn't been much else going on.  Since it's March, the MCAS are coming up, though for once, the state decided to push the test date back a week.  That's huge, because I was panicking a little bit about missing all those snow days and not having time to make up the lost curriculum.  So now the test is at the end of March and the first two weeks of April.  Along with that, we're in the midst of buying a house.  I haven't said much about it to anyone yet because I want to be sure that we're actually going to get the house.  The inspection is today and as long as that goes well, our closing date is April 10.  So, family members, if you're reading this, Ryan and I are probably moving out next month! (I'll be honest, I just remembered that the family reads this, so I probably should have told them before publishing this post, but, I didn't.)  There's also a  track coach job open at one of the high schools here, so I'm going to go ahead and apply for that.  Never hurts to try, right? I can't think of anything else of particular excitement right now, so I guess that's it.  Here are some pictures for fun.

I made this fantastic leprechaun as a door decoration

This is the medal from the 4 miler.  One piece of a three part medal.  The other two attach to either end.  What I'm saying is that this medal is going to be gigantic. Maybe a little too gigantic

Door

Making posters

I'm going to mail these to Disney and have them hang them up during their marathons.  I feel like that's a reasonable plan....

Snow place like home

Whooooeee it has been a long week or two.  Honestly, the days have all but blended together with all the snowstorms and school cancellations.  February has never seemed shorter, and that's saying a lot, since it's already the shortest month!  Seriously though, if the snow could quit, I'd be a little bit happier.  There's pretty much no place left to walk, park, or drive if another car is coming at you.  It's getting out of hand.  Yet, we are intrepid, we carry on.  What else can you do, with all this snow around and talk of another storm or two heading this way? The good news is, it's almost February vacation.  The bad news is, it's almost February vacation.  I make this next statement with the knowledge that teachers in the state of Massachusetts will be calling for my head, but it's about time we did away with February vacation.  Let's be honest, we just got back from Winter Break, and with the SEVEN snow days we've had in the past 15 days, this vacation is a bit of a joke.  What the students could really use is 5 more days of work.  Besides, we're one of the only states that still has this vacation hanging about.  I say scrap it, start school earlier than the Wednesday before Labor Day, and use March for Spring break.  It would solve SO many problems. But, who am I to change things?  Alright, aside from the snow days, there's no where to run, so I've been spending a lot of quality time with the treadmill.  I don't love it.  Also due to the snow, I missed 4 days of being able to workout.  I know, that's insane! At this point though I've made it up and I feel like I'm back on track.  Wouldn't you know it, that means I'm getting a cold.  I can feel it coming on.  My nose is stuffy/runny, my eyes are itchy, and things hurt.  Fantastic.  Nothing like a good cold to start vacation. Since I don't have a new goal in the near future, I decided to work towards upping my punches at boxing.  I started low today with a total of just over 3000 punches. My goal is to try and add on at least 100 more punches each week.  I only need to track one day, but I might track all and just pick my best.  Except Sunday's because that's a 12 round class and that would feel like cheating.
Completely out of the realm of working out, but back on the snow day thing, I made one final pair of shoes a couple of weeks ago.  I went Little Mermaid themed, just to see how it worked out,  They came out alright, but I'm not sure I love them.  However, I did want to try and fix the paint chipping problem I had on the first pair.  The paint on the rubber part of the sole chipped off as they were worn around, so I wanted to try and fix that.  I saw a trick online that if you sand the rubber with fine grain sandpaper it makes the paint more likely to absorb into the rubber, so I tried that.  It looks like the paint held up a bit better, but still chipped off in places.  At this point, I'm beginning to think it's the sealant that's chipping it off, not the actual paint.  Anyways, I'll add a picture of those in a minute.  Finally, the students at my school are number one in the city for the math program we've been doing.  Yes, that's right, number one! We're third in the state, and in the top 100 in the nation! There are some days when I feel like I'm doing a real bad job teaching, but learning this made me feel like I must be doing something right.  I'm very proud of the school and I love being able to brag about the students.  Tomorrow they're getting a special award from the school committee, which is very exciting.  So, that's it, snow city in a nutshell. Enjoy the pictures!

Punch counters

Icicles and ice dams 

Way to go Tracy School!

Snow pile...it's gotten a lot bigger since this picture

Too many snow days

Being snowed in and not having to work really is not as fun as it sounds.  I promise.  To start, now we're behind 3 more days in school.  Add that to the other reasons why we might not be on track with the curriculum mapping and suddenly we're a month behind where we're supposed to be.  In some jobs, this might not be a huge deal.  Maybe you can make it up, work a little extra, push some papers through, I don't know, I'm not a doctor.  What I do know is that my 3 - 5 grade students still have to take the district benchmark test in February.  And everyone has to take the MCAS in March and May.  So, even though we may be behind, our tests are not.  Now we're in that tricky spot where we have to decide, do we push through the topics to make sure we at least cover everything on the test, but leave more than half the class behind in terms of actually understanding, or do we keep our pace and miss covering material that shows up? Don't worry though, we'll get to make up these missed days in June.  At the end of the year.  After all the tests.  Please, tell me how much sense that makes, because I'm still not seeing it.  I'd rather give up February vacation and be able to keep the kids on track to success, than have to struggle through the end of June trying to find reasons to convince the students that what we're doing still matters.
Ok, enough about that.  Since there's absolutely no where to walk outside, that means no running either.  :( Suddenly the treadmill is my best friend.  Yesterday I got in 5 miles, yes 5, with speed included.  Today I did 3.1 with hills and speed.  I still haven't decided about the Hyannis marathon either.  I know I should probably do it, but I don't want to sign up.
Since I've been bored out of my mind after being home for the past few days, I decided to make another pair of shoes.  I mostly liked the way the first pair came out, and I wanted to try a new design.  So I went out and got another pair of cheap white canvas sneakers to design.  This pair came from H&M, so I'm not really sure how comfortable they'll be, but I really think they came out cute.  Without further ado....

Oh yea, and I finally achieved my goal of drawing a Disney Princess in way that actually looks like a Disney Princess!

Oh, and just in case you didn't believe me about the snow levels. Ignore my face, I can't smile in the cold after I wash my face apparently....

STELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Yup. This is my backyard. That's a fence over in the far left.